EFR 838: How to Become Good at Suffering - Surviving an Avalanche, Climbing Mt. Everest & Living with Bipolar II Disorder with Cory Richards

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production Alone Alone, climbing Mount Everest yeah, without oxygen.

00:06 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, the sun starts to come up and I got to the summit. And then I was just alone. This realization that, like literally my brain, my person, my organic figure was the highest point on the planet. I've come to the highest place on the planet in a very, very difficult way, the hardest way I can imagine, and there's no place else I can go To get away from myself.

00:32 - Chase (Host) This is you facing at this moment. You're this expeditionist, you're climbing the gold's tallest mountains and now, here you are, stuck in this kind of like average the snowstorm and ohstorm and you're like, oh yeah, this is it. You really seem to share how to become good at suffering.

00:52 - Cory (Guest) I think this is one of the problems with so many of these tales, these narratives of our abuse, is that oftentimes we negate how we feed into them. Diagnosed bipolar II when I was 15, so there was this narrative of brokenness and this idea of I was going to go crazy In order to escape madness. I will live madly. What's up everybody? I'm Corey Richards, author of the Color of Everything. I'm here on Ever Forward Radio forward radio.

01:33 - Chase (Host) My guest today is cory richards. He is an internationally renowned photographer, filmmaker, director and writer, but above all, he is an artist and storyteller who passionately explores the human experience through all mediums. His work for National Geographic magazine began with adventure features exploring the most remote corners of the globe, from Antarctica to the Russian Arctic, and as a professional climber. His early career was defined by high risk expeditions and leaned on his unique skill set to capture stories that were largely out of reach to others. Then, in 2011, corp became the first and only American to climb one of the world's 8,000-meter peaks in winter, summiting Gashabrum II in the Karorkarum Himalaya of Pakistan I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly. And then, on his descent, his team was swept away by an avalanche in which they were all buried but narrowly escaped with their lives. This and so much more is waiting for you in my episode today with Corey Richards. Corey is a lot of things. He's an adventurer, photographer, man of great notoriety. If you check out his Instagram, his website, he's got two books now out. All of his accomplishments, professionally, of course, are going to be linked for you down in the show notes, as always under episode resources. But beyond that, beyond the accolade. Beyond the adventures, beyond the mountain summiting, beyond the near-death experiences, corey is a friend. He's a new friend here in Los Angeles and someone that I am deeply appreciative for, for getting to know and for sitting down with me to open up in a way that I think is going to be very unique, very fulfilling and potentially even very relatable to you listening right now. Corey went from being kicked out of the house as a teenager to battling at home domestic violence, physical, mental, emotional, navigating sexuality, identity purpose all in a very short window of time. And he is here today to uncover his biggest takeaways from his biggest struggles in his life what it feels like to quite literally summit the highest peaks in the world and to navigate the deepest valleys of the human experience.

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06:34 - Cory (Guest) Rainier.

06:34 - Chase (Host) Well, rilke, everybody will just yeah, rilke, shout out, rilke, you've got this amazing quote that you kick off the book with that I would like to use in conjunction with asking you the question of Ever Forward Quote let everything happen to you beauty and terror Just keep going. No feeling is final. Yeah, I want to use that and then ask you ever forward.

06:56 - Cory (Guest) What are those two words mean to you? Well, I think it's just constant evolution, but, but also there's so much in moving ever forward. To me, you can't not be, but you can always make the choice to try to stay the same. And I think people really fight hard, People try so hard to stay the same. We become committed to our suffering or committed to whatever it is that that, that, even if it's, even if it's maladaptive, it's comfortable. So we choose to stay in that. So ever forward is, in essence, the reality of all things. It's living. But but at the same time, so many of us fight. Fight it because it's comfortable where we are, even if it's uncomfortable.

07:49 - Chase (Host) Man, what a immediate perspective shift that I think a lot of us would agree For me to change, for me to want more, for me to do more, be more, have more. I have to make a choice. I have to make a series of choices, have to make a choice. I have to make a series of choices and in order to move my life forward, that takes consecutive choices, but also to stay the same.

08:13 - Cory (Guest) That's a choice. That is well it's. There's a Taoist concept called Wu Wei, which is action through non-action. So the choice to stay, the choice to do nothing, is still a choice, exactly to your point, and it's not always bad. In fact, sometimes choosing to not act can be the most prudent choice. But when we talk about transformation and we talk about change, so often we think of constant action. So ever forward would, for so many people, imply a constant choice of action, Because there's also the narrative that to act is, you know, inspiration follows action or motivation follows action. And yet I think there's real value sometimes in reconciling the idea that sometimes the quietude of choosing not to act is actually a large step forward.

09:11 - Chase (Host) Yeah, You're describing my exact current season of life Me too.

09:17 - Cory (Guest) That's why I can articulate it, maybe it's just a rationalization for where I am.

09:24 - Chase (Host) This kind of concept came to mind after going through your book and getting to know you more, and it's that you really seem to share. How to become good at suffering. Yeah, would you agree?

09:37 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, I would agree that suffering was, for me, for a long time, part of my identity, and so there was. I think there's a skill to endurance, but I think suffering is something different. I chose to suffer versus choosing to endure mindfully Right. So the suffering is sort of. The suffering is, um. What's that old dad saying Pain is optional or pain is, pain is inevitable, suffering is. What's that old dad saying Pain is optional or pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, or something like that.

10:09 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kind of like the stoic. I believe it's Seneca. You know, we suffer far more in imagination than in reality. Exactly, exactly.

10:17 - Cory (Guest) But I think for a long time, and certainly through the narrative that's described in the book, there was this idea that in order to almost be valuable, I had to validate my endurance through suffering. And I also had a very entrenched story of suffering where I thought again to Seneca's point, like you know, I thought that by suffering and creating that internal suffering in some ways, I was somehow stronger, when in fact I think the real strength and the point of this whole conversation and the point of this whole podcast, your whole platform, is to move beyond that or to move through it.

10:58 - Chase (Host) Move through it, absolutely yeah. So just to kind of take the listener there, I mean, this is you facing, at this moment, certain death. You're this expeditionist, you're climbing the world's tallest mountains and now here you are, stuck in this kind of like avalanche, this snowstorm, and you're like, oh yeah, this is it.

11:15 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, this is it, and so kind of this.

11:17 - Chase (Host) At the end, moment you go, quote they'll find my body in the spring, when my orange down suit emerges from the melting snow and feathers float from the tears. After months of uncertainty, mom and dad will finally have closure and all the fights and fuss and anger we endured together will seem silly compared to my death. I wonder if my eyes will be open or closed, and if they will still be blue. At this moment of your impending doom, facing a certain death, you thought about your parents and the years of all the fighting and you thought maybe that will melt away, just kind of like I will, or the snow that's going to melt away to define me, or they'll find me, and then that might melt away. The years of all this pain and suffering. Why them? And now, clearly you made it out yeah, has that winter thawed?

12:07 - Cory (Guest) wow, what a good question. I I love coming on podcasts where people like have put deep thought into the. That is that's like you.

12:21 It already worked. So I mean, look, our families are, whether or not we like them, whether we disown them, whether we leave them behind, or whether they're our closest allies, our families are, they're our blood, they are literally our genetic imprint, they are our pathway into existence and if you think of everything that's happened before you over 13.8 billion years and all of those ancestors that could have gone left, but they went right, and had they gone left, they might've died right Think of that entire family tree, right. So when, when I was in this avalanche, we're on the side of a mountain called Gashabrim 2, it's the middle of winter, where we've done the first winter ascent. It's the 13th highest mountain in the world. We get hit by this avalanche.

13:20 Everything that I am and everything that I perceive comes through a family lens. It has to right, because that's where I learned all my stories, that's where I learned who I was, that's who, that's how I formed myself, and and I thought of my parents, I thought of my family, I thought of a lot of random, different shit, but certainly thinking about dying and and and dying before my parents, which I know to be one of the greatest pains, at least I'm told. I wondered, I wondered about you know, how will this impact them? And, and I think also there is some revisionist history in this, because it all happened so fast. Right, the thoughts are not this for me, they were not this linear line of poetry, but there was this anger, there was this curiosity, there was resentment and regret and then it was like what, you know, does anything that felt so gravitational, so important and so worthy of conflict? Is any of that going to matter when I die right now?

14:27 And the answer is no. I mean, we see it all the time. You know people, when people pass on, we are more capable of just letting go of our tightly held stories and we just let them be fully human and there's no more blame, because there's no more that you can't place the blame anymore, there's no place for it to go. So, so often we're just we let it go. And to answer your second question, absolutely, in the years since this, it's been almost um, it'll be 15, no 2011. It'll be 14 years in February. Yeah, I mean, everything's changed. Part of that is my dad now moving towards his death. Part of it is my mom and I really reconciling a lot of our relationship through a number of different cool modalities. But yeah, I mean yeah, that winter has thawed. What a great way to put it too. What a beautiful way to say that I thought it worked.

15:29 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I thought it worked. Well, you should write a book. Yeah, working on it, working on it. A follow-up question there. So there you are, thinking you're about to die at the top of this mountain. What was you said? Maybe there were some like random things that came to mind. Yeah, you're, you think you're about to die. What was one of the most or the most random thoughts, memories, feelings that came at that moment? Clearly it mattered, or else maybe your conscious or subconscious wouldn't have shown it to you.

15:58 - Cory (Guest) I mean truly. I thought about I and it says it in the book I thought about Cheerios Like I thought about breakfast cereal. I thought about Cheerios Like I thought about breakfast cereal. I thought about parking tickets. I thought about just shit that you know.

16:10 What I thought about a lot was things that felt unresolved and unfinished business unfinished business, but it wasn't as if it was like I don't like the word regret. I know I used it earlier. I don't really like the word regret because I don't. It implies something. It's a very specific story. But I just thought about unresolved things and there was a tension between you know, I don't this finality, which means I don't get to resolve something, and the desire to resolve it. And there's sort of a twist on that in the book towards the end, where I talk about I actually don't think resolution really exists, at least not emotionally. I think we come to you know, if you want to talk about ever forward, I think part of that is acceptance and I think you know acceptance is resolution, is is all up in your head. Acceptance is stuff that happens in your heart and we might not get the result that we ultimately want, but if you can accept simply what is, the need for resolution just evaporates.

17:21 - Chase (Host) Ooh man, that was good. That's a clip right there.

17:24 - Cory (Guest) I like that.

17:26 - Chase (Host) You, uh, in the early part of your story and early part of the book, you know you did something that I think a lot of us can relate to, or at least I've heard about or thought about, and that's running away. Yeah, you know you, uh, you did what a lot of kids attempt but actually succeeded at, and you ran away from home. You were 15, 16.

17:45 - Cory (Guest) actually succeeded at and you ran away from home. You were 15, 16, I was 50. Well, I ran away three times. I was in uh, this psychiatric sort of long-term um behavioral rehab for for troubled teens called lifeline, and I was there for eight months. It was 12 hours a day of group therapy. It was like it was. It was all with the best intentions in coming out in the worst ways and I think you know there's another conversation about how we, how we treat uh troubled teens. That's that's worthy of looking at. But yeah, I ran away three times and finally, my parents were just like no, like you can't come they. They laid out, they laid down a down a line which I think is really beautiful in some ways because they chose the preservation of their own relationship, knowing that if they held onto that I was more likely to come around, because it gave them an anchor. But in order for them to create that situation, they also had to cut me loose.

18:45 - Chase (Host) What do you think was more scary? Was it being out on your own as a teenager or staying home in that situation?

18:53 - Cory (Guest) Oh God, dude, killer, Like amazing questions, Nobody's.

18:59 - Chase (Host) Uh, that is wow, it's like almost choosing the lesser of two evils. Right, I can't imagine I've never been there but truly two horrible, shitty choices that are both probably terrifying.

19:12 - Cory (Guest) Well, terrifying, like. Actually, I would choose being on the run because, as scary as it was and there's some real darkness in the book there's a chapter where I end up, you know, squatting in this guy's house and it has a million different interpretations and I think it's really hard for some people to read Chapter 8. But being on the run was exciting. Right, I was in control. I mean I was to a certain degree I was in control. I mean I was to a certain degree, I was in control and I so. So in that way there was this excitement, there was a stimulation, and nobody was telling me what to do or where to be, or how to be, or what I was or what I wasn't.

19:58 - Chase (Host) Which every teenager. That's like every teenager's wet dream.

20:01 - Cory (Guest) Right, right, there was a freedom to it.

20:02 - Chase (Host) This coming of age and freedom.

20:04 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, there was a, there was and there was a very, and I could craft my own story and I certainly chose the story of I'm the victim.

20:10 You know, here I am this poor kid who's been, you know, cast out into the wilderness. And so I would choose that, because living at home at the time was scary. For a number of reasons. It was much scarier to be there, and it was largely because of the relationship I had with my brother who, by the way, is a marvelous human being and I, I I extend more gratitude to him than anybody else in my life because, for as difficult as that relationship was, it was because of him and I mean this from the bottom of my heart it was because of him and because of our relationship that I decided to look into all of this. It was because of how hard that was and the residue of it that I decided that I wanted to really investigate who I was and how we become who we are. So I think of my brothers, my greatest guide. But, yeah, I would a hundred percent choose at that time to be on the run.

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23:07 - Cory (Guest) It was. It was just. It was violent at the time. You know, when we were young, we had a. We had a beautiful sort of tender relationship. He was the older brother, he was very kind, he was but, but something and and I think these seeds were planted very, very young and I think it might have been the result of sort of insecure attachments that came from potentially postpartum depression and these ideas of these emotional deficits or these emotional needs not getting met in very, very subtle ways. My parents were marvelous, they did everything they could and yet still we ended up in this very fucked up situation. Um, so it's a cautionary tale about parenting in general, but the relationship between my brother developed into something that was very, very violent, and we learned that and it was rage filled. I think there's a very big difference between brothers kicking the shit out of each other because they're brothers, um, which I think is fairly normal. You know, fists are thrown.

24:06 - Chase (Host) Right, yeah, yeah, so my brother can attest.

24:08 - Cory (Guest) We throw each other around. There's some bloody noses, there's some whatever, but most of the time those relationships repair. The difference between my brother and I was there was this deep rage and I don't know where that came from, and it was scary. I would say that if we use the word trauma, I would say that the more traumatic element was not the physical violence but the emotional violence, the rage that drove it. That's what scared me and that's, of course, the physical violence was also pronounced, but I also take a lot of ownership in that, because, just as he learned that by picking a fight, um, or by by exerting, uh, physical violence, he got attention, I learned that if I got the shit kicked out of me, I got attention, and so we were both vying for our emotional needs to be met. It's this toxic relationship.

25:05 - Chase (Host) It's a toxic relationship that you didn't ask for, but you're recognizing you're getting something out of.

25:10 - Cory (Guest) For sure, and I think this is one of the problems with so many of these tales, these narratives of our abuse, is that oftentimes we negate how we feed into them, and it's really hard to do.

25:23 - Chase (Host) Who wants to admit that yeah?

25:24 - Cory (Guest) Exactly, and it's not to say that everybody is feeding into it at all. I'm not suggesting that and I'm not saying that every person who has been in an abusive relationship is in any way responsible. All I'm saying is that I can take that ownership and say as scary as it was and I didn't understand that at the time, but certainly in retrospect I can see that at least on some level I was like well, this works for me too.

25:52 - Chase (Host) You know Cause at some point, yeah, you have to recognize. The bitter truth here is that I'm a player on the field as well.

25:57 - Cory (Guest) A hundred, percent and there's there's real freedom, you know, ever forward. I think one of the largest steps forward I've ever taken was when I switched from life is happening to me to taking full, radical responsibility for every single thing in my life. And that is incredibly challenging and I still work on it, especially in my relationship, the, the, the leap that it takes to take responsibility for not necessarily the fight that I get in with my, with my significant other, but for creating the container that would allow the fight to exist. Wow, wow, yeah, that is, that is a huge shift. And talk about, you know, making a leap forward in our interaction with the world. That has been a huge one for me, but that extends to every single corner of my life. And that's not to say that I'm some, you know that I'm in any way like, oh, I'm so powerful. That's not it at all. It's just to say that with, within any circumstance, finding my ownership in it and being accountable to it and taking full agency in that moment, that's, that's a huge shift.

27:13 - Chase (Host) I don't know why this car analogy popped in mind, but it kind of you're describing this container where maybe you know obstacles and friction and arguments, but also love and a lot of other things. They all have to have the same contributing factors in order for them to come out, know obstacles and friction and arguments, but also love and a lot of other things. They all have to have the same contributing factors in order for them to come out. And it makes me think of, you know, a combustion engine. You know the factors have to be just right in that container for all of that shit to fire that can keep you sitting there or can also propel you forward.

27:42 - Cory (Guest) Right, exactly, the container matters. The container absolutely matters and how you build it matters. And, like we talked about earlier, we're all earlier, we're always moving forward, but the container we're moving forward in is entirely our responsibility. Right, you can just get pushed through life or you can say, okay, I'm going to take full responsibility. I mean, when I was in um, when I was in AA, and I was sober for six years I'm no longer sober. That's something to talk about, if I think a lot of people have a hard time with that.

28:11 But one of the things that I really took from the rooms was stay on your side of the street, and I think so often we try to outsource our pain, or we try to you know, we like, or we, you know we we outsource the cause of it, we, we try to blame, when in fact, that it might actually be totally relevant, it might actually have happened to you from an external source. But blaming somebody actually doesn't do shit. It just keeps you trapped in it. It just keeps you tethered to it. Right, and so you're not. You might be trying to move forward, but you're actually chained to the past, psychically and otherwise, where you're just. You're just dragging that along. Blame is just dragging and it's, and it's very different to be like I don't blame somebody and then embody that, but that is, that's again, that's a journey that you, it's, it's. You can have the words, but until you feel it, you're still. You'll feel when the chain breaks.

29:09 - Chase (Host) Dude, yeah, it's like you're reading out of my journal. I, up until like a couple of years ago, you know, this show, this mantra, these words ever forward came from my dad and it was his life mantra. And when he passed in 2005, this turned into something. Because of that, I thought, oh, I'm going to take this, I'm going to move forward for the sake of moving forward. But I've used this analogy before, and so perfect. All I was doing was just adding another link on a chain, right, without realizing that that chain is still connected to this immovable object in the past. Yeah, and I can get a lot of distance between me and it. Right, but where am I really going? Right? Importantly, why am I? Am I even moving? Is going forward the right thing for me right now?

29:56 - Cory (Guest) Yeah.

29:57 - Chase (Host) And until I kind of had that realization of taking total ownership and choosing to stay put so that I can make the best next calculated step forward, right man, I unhooked myself from that chain and it's, it's like, it's great. I know all that stuff is there in the past and it's not like oh, I've moved on, I forgot about it, but you're free from it. Yeah, you're free from it and you can go back to it whenever you want to now, but you're no longer chained to it.

30:23 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful analogy and I you know, sometimes moving forward means stopping turning around and taking the chain apart, link by link, you know Right. And then inevitably you realize that it's actually not chained to anything. It's just you get to that last link. There's no boulder there. There might be bigger links, but there's no, there's.

30:45 - Chase (Host) It's not chained to anything, it's just a prisoner of our own mind.

30:49 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, yeah, exactly.

30:51 - Chase (Host) Another quote you have in there is am I cause or effect and kind of still in you know, this part of your story of the situation at home. I think this is such a really powerful question that a lot of children are now adults of broken homes, even physical, emotional abuse, might find themselves asking so am I cause or effect for the less than ideal situation at home? Where do you land on that now?

31:17 - Cory (Guest) I mean yes, and you know I am, look, children, no child asked. Well, maybe on some cosmic level that I haven't unwound yet, and maybe I don't even want to, but I will say, cognitively, no child asked to be here. Right, that is not a choice that we necessarily made. Certainly, on some back level, infinite. Okay, I'll make space for that. But just for the sake of this conversation, no child asked to be here. So we're, we are given this opportunity at life and yet our cognitive ability to understand the totality of it, when we're that young, we're still in a very cause and effect state of mind. In fact, that's how we're learning. You know, I do this, this happens, and in its full discovery, but when you, when, when I was talking about the relationship at home, I was so curious, like, am I causing this or am I just the effect of it? And I don't know if that really makes sense, but you know, or what is the effect? Or am I the effect too? Like am I causing and affecting everything? Or you know what is the effect?

32:34 - Chase (Host) You know it was or?

32:34 - Cory (Guest) does either matter. But that's the bigger point is that the attempt to unwind it is more this attempt to make sense of it. But in hindsight I can see it doesn't really matter. It was, it was just what was. It's just, it's just, it's. It's just what was.

32:55 And and we want to know and I think this is one of the limitations of psychology and therapy sometimes is that we, we get stuck in the story. We get stuck in trying to unwind and unravel the whys and the hows and whodunit of of our psychology right, of the way we work and how are the mechanisms of our mind and our heart. But at some point that is just, it's inconsequential. Until at least, I found for me that it was when I was like, okay, I, I know all I can fucking know about the mechanisms of, you know, early childhood development and you know I could write a dissertation on this shit. At some point it didn't matter anymore. It just didn't matter because the reality is these are the ways in which I behave. My understanding of why is useful only in so far as that I can um frame any behavior in that context and then say yeah, but that that is not the current context, right, yeah?

34:06 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it makes me think of um. I've been in this situation in various different ways and it's almost like this, um, humbling acceptance that it to your point. This is, it just is, it just is. And I am not yet at a point in my understanding, in my fathoming, in my perspective, in my ego and whatever, to really be able to understand why or how or where to go from here, but when I could just accept the situation. That is what put me on the path to getting to all those other places.

34:45 - Cory (Guest) Right, and that's sort of the conversation about agency. In some ways, it's just like you just accept what is. That is taking responsibility. Now you can choose to stay stuck in it poor me or you can choose to move with it and through it, you know, or you can choose to run from it, which is ultimately staying stuck in it.

35:10 You can fight the river or go downstream with it. Exactly, it's in it's man. It's so much easier to go downstream that I've used this analogy before too, where something happens and you're like you know, okay, so I'm driving, somebody's texting, they run a stop sign, they T-bone me. Right, it's not my fault, I didn't. I was following the rules, I was driving the speed limit, I was looking both ways, but they they were not paying attention and they T-bone me. Well, it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility.

35:36 So the sort of the idea of victimhood and staying stuck in what happened to us is that of well, now I'm just going to drive around in a shitty car and complain about it, or you can take all the you know the insurance information. You drive to the shop, you get it towed, you get your car fixed, or it gets totaled and you get a new one. Like it is your responsibility to deal with the situation, no matter what happened. And that's so fucking hard because it actually kind of feels good to drive around in a shitty car and complain about it and tell everybody about your train wreck you know it feels good because it it fosters a certain sense of sympathy.

36:19 But that sympathy actually wears out. It's, it's, it has you know. Sure, for a week people are like oh bummer. For a month they're like oh bummer. After a year they're like dude, get your fucking car fixed.

36:32 - Chase (Host) You know, square your shit away.

36:33 - Cory (Guest) Yeah.

36:33 - Chase (Host) Yeah, and it's so true. Just because you think and this might not necessarily be the truth, but because you think it is not your fault, does not take away that it is your responsibility.

36:43 - Cory (Guest) Exactly, Exactly, and the truth is that's true. I mean, we're obviously using this in the context of trauma, the things that happened to us. You can still be angry. You can still be angry that somebody, but even that kind of it's really kind of useless.

36:59 - Chase (Host) Such a waste of energy.

37:00 - Cory (Guest) It truly is. It truly is yeah.

37:02 - Chase (Host) So it was kind of during this time in your, in your story, where you began to really kind of get outside, literally more outside of your body, of your mind, outdoors, and you talk about how quote, nature is the only reprieve I get from my hyperactive brain. What is it about nature that is so therapeutic for you and, I'll say, for the collective us?

37:27 - Cory (Guest) Well, I mean, we are nature right, so we are. We've built a structure and a society that keeps us sort of feeling separate from nature, what we call nature.

37:38 But when you zoom out, all of this is natural. I know people are like you know, the forest is natural and the way the earth evolved is natural. Okay, yes, and we are of the earth and so everything that we do is natural. We are a natural species operating in a natural way on a natural planet. We can't actually be outside of nature. What I'm referring to in this, in this case, is that more finite definition of nature.

38:06 When we go out and we connect with the planet in its more organic form, there is a cellular resonance that has a calming effect on our bodies, it helps regulate our nervous system and quite often it takes us out of our mind or allows us to work through whatever is cluttering our mind.

38:36 So the movement oftentimes we're moving in nature, right, so when we're moving we're helping sort of declutter. When we're sitting, we are, I think, very much connecting on a more cellular level, and and both would be true if you're moving too but there's something about the quiet of sitting in nature that has a profound calming effect on our nervous system and can help us step out of our sympathetic, sympathetic nervous system and back into our parasympathetic, where we're um, we're regulating and and there's plenty of research that shows. Even you know, there was one thing where it showed just showing inmates in solitary confinement pictures of nature, um helped down, regulate their their sort of anxiety about that, isolate, I mean. It made him feel more connected. So I think there's also something to feeling connected to a larger whole and in my case, specifically the activities that we were doing outside skiing, climbing they demand a certain level of um flow.

39:46 I don't want to you know, I think presence is something much bigger than flow. I think you know mindfulness, presence and flow are sort of different things, but they're all you can't get to flow without presence Right.

40:00 I would say well, I would say, like I would say presence is the, is the, is the ultimate, everything Right, that's how I view it, but I understand what you're saying too. I would say, well, I would say, like I would say presence is the, is the, is the ultimate, everything right, that's how I view it, but I understand what you're saying too. I would say flow is a pathway to presence. Potentially, sure, yeah, but but it's not. It's not an awareness of the totality of things. Does that make sense?

40:21 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah, it's like same same but different.

40:23 - Cory (Guest) Exactly, so maybe, maybe, maybe it's semantics Um just a matter of perspective. Right, Right so, but if you're skiing it, you know I'm nine years old and I started. I mean, we were good skiers and you're going 40 miles an hour or 50 miles an hour, you have to be very, very present or very you have to be very mindful, you have to be in some level of flow.

40:47 So by virtue of that, that, that that chaos of my head, that loud sort of noise of jumping from thought to thought, to thought, to thought, to thought, just just became singular, and so it was like. It was actually like a rest.

41:03 - Chase (Host) Which I'm sure came at a time where you cannot appreciate that more.

41:07 - Cory (Guest) Exactly, you know, and so what I also learned is that by being in nature, you know, you step outside of the demands of belonging because you just belong, we just belong in nature, right, and so the identity and the structure of that identity, it gave me a place of belonging because it was so elemental. Now, conversely, spinning forward all that outdoor activity, as I certainly moved into like being a professional climber, became my identity, so it actually started to work in the opposite direction.

41:46 - Chase (Host) Are you struggling to put the phone down at night, to wind down, to properly shift out of the day's activities, to let your mind and body separate from the day, so that you can ease into nighttime, so you can get to sleep, stay asleep? Or what about that pesky alarm clock in the morning? Do you struggle to just wake up, feeling in a panic because your alarm is just blaring at you? Or maybe your partner gets up at a different time than you and it's just always disrupting your sleep? Well, let me put you on to our proud new partners at Hatch and their Restore 2 smart sleep clock today. With it you can say goodnight to screen time.

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43:11 We got a limited time $20 off deal for you off of the Restore 2, your favorite new sleep health tool. Got to check the link? Okay, check the link in the show notes today under episode resources to get this deal. You get free shipping, a 30-night bedside trial, not to mention a one-year product warranty. Exclusive link for you in the show notes under episode resources today to get $20 off of the Restore 2 Hatch Smart Sleep Clock. Yeah, I want to get there next, but before I do, can you like set the stage for us? You know this is not just some guy who loves nature and get out and right, right, he's not climbing mountains for fun. I mean, corey, you're an extremely world renowned, accomplished climber, adventurous expeditionist. Your work and even you, you know, we've seen on covers of magazines National Geographic so please paint the picture of this professional outdoorsman for us.

44:05 - Cory (Guest) Yeah. So I mean, and this happened, you know, I was in psychiatric units, I was on the street, I was, you know, bouncing around back in psychiatric, like the adolescence was a mess and it's really detailed pretty heavily in the book. And there was ultimately this, this decision that I made and it was pretty much, I would say, it's unconscious or subconscious, where I was like, fuck it. I'm because of the chaos of my childhood. I was very adept at navigating hyper stimulating and chaotic environments and so I gravitated towards them because it's what I knew. Right, I learned to navigate chaos really, really well.

44:42 - Chase (Host) And now it's the chaos is my choice. But see, that was the whole thing. It's what I knew, right, I learned to navigate chaos really really well.

44:44 - Cory (Guest) And now it's the chaos is my choice, but see, that was the whole thing. It's like, well, if I'm good at that now I'm gonna do it right. And there was also this narrative of, like you know, I was diagnosed bipolar two when I was 15. So there was this narrative of brokenness and this idea of I was to go crazy at any given moment. I was going to like, if I didn't take these pills, if I didn't do this stuff, I was going to go crazy. And so there's this. There was like a crystallizing moment and again I only really understand it now where I was like, well, I and I say it in the book I'm going to risk my life in order to save it.

45:22 - Chase (Host) So like please rewind or go back, say that again man.

45:25 - Cory (Guest) I'm going to risk my life in order to save it, meaning that my life is fucked. But what I'm really good at is risking my life, so by doing that, I can generate notoriety, I can generate a place where I belong I can. I can stamp my mark in the world, so I'm going to belong I can. I can stamp my mark in the world, so I'm going to. I'm going to go do this risky stuff in order to save my life from absolute despair and I'm going to in order to escape madness. I will live madly.

45:53 And it was reflexive and again, this is, like you know, sort of it's it's it's it's meaning making. In hindsight, and I see that it's a creation of a story and it's a good one, but also I understand that what it really is is a framework to help me understand why I was trying to make the decisions. I was making Sure and um, and so yeah, and, and I and I jumped into that world, and I jumped headlong into that world and I and I took my camera with me. Um, I, I never was like I want to be a photographer. That never crossed my mind until I started taking pictures. And then it snowballed and it just got bigger and bigger, bigger, better, faster. More, bigger, better, faster, more, bigger expeditions. And this is coming out of that adolescent period where I really rediscovered climbing and in that moment discovered photography which gave me an anchor that that kind of helped pull me out of that that fuck show of of adolescence.

46:56 - Chase (Host) Well, yeah, I mean what comes to mind for me in that is to your point you grew up in chaos, and so I'm going to choose my own chaos. Now, right, but even literally, I'm going to show the world this chaos through the lens of my choice. Right, right, exactly. That is, if that is not the most like accepting of a shitty situation and taking ownership and command of it all at the same time, and whether you realize this consciously at the time or not, but that's what you've done.

47:25 - Cory (Guest) Well, it was certainly. I mean, I it's, it's a beautiful understanding of it now and it's a story I choose and I look back on it and I think, oh man, like you, look at how I was telling these stories. I mean, the allegory of climbing is as old as time and it's the allegory of struggle, right? And so really I think what I was and the pictures I was always most interested in making was when shit went wrong. You know, like I was pretty uninterested in creating the like beautiful. I mean I made some, you know, I made some cool, beautiful pictures of climbing. But the stuff that really really was exciting to me is when something went completely sideways. You're in a storm, you're looking at somebody suffering, because to me that's what I was trying to, that's what resonated most and that's what I was trying to tell my story through these pictures. And then it got bigger than climbing. But for a while, yes, I was a professional. For 20 years I climbed pretty much professionally.

48:29 - Chase (Host) Take us to that moment. You talk about this in the book, about, I believe you were in Austria and you're kind of going through your first real photography experience class and can you tell us what this instructor told you to do? And this, this experience of just going out in the woods for a couple of days, right, and he's like he gave, he gave you this objective of what he wanted you to do in photography, and walk us through the struggle of the understanding you had with that objective, how you actually executed on it and when you kind of realized what had happened, like pun intended, you know what clicked for you.

49:06 - Cory (Guest) Yeah Well, what clicked in what way? In with it with the photography assignment.

49:10 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

49:10 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, so I was studying under a guy named Andrew Phelps in Salzburg, austria, and you know I had decided to go study abroad. I'd gotten back and after dropping out, I'd gotten back into school, at least briefly, and I decided to go study in this place in Austria and I showed Andrew my pictures and he was like I think there's something here. But the assignment was basically I want you to go out and walk around the, the, the monksburg, which is like this mountain that rises in the middle of town, and it's not really a mountain, but it's a big, big hill, and I just want you to take pictures of the mundane. He's like I want you to see what you're a part of. And the idea was that, to that point, all of my photography was very reactionary, meaning I'm in hyper stimulating environments, photographing extraordinary landscapes and people doing these, these crazy things in these landscapes, and what he was advocating for was like I don't want you to react to the world, I want you to respond to it. I don't want you to catch a moment, I want you to make it. I don't want you to to to speak for the world. I want it to, I want it to speak through you. Right, stop trying to and I think I use these words in the book like stop thrusting yourself upon it. And so I went onto this mountain that was I mean, it's very monk-like, because that's actually where the Benedictine monks settled this town essentially, and it was one of the first structures and I walked around and I just looked at like piles of sticks and I tried to find beauty in like piles of sticks and these little structures that maybe kids had made and like just you know a fence post, like just you know a fence post. And really what he was trying to do is again get me to quiet the mind right, to quiet myself, to be articulate with what I wanted to say and to put real intention and mindfulness towards it. And it clicked. Then I think I conceptually understood it and I kind of did it. It would take and it did take years, years and years and years for me to fully get it. The irony of that is that when I really got it, when I really really understood what he was asking of me, it only happened after I stopped taking pictures altogether.

51:41 How so Well, only happened after I stopped taking pictures altogether. How so? Well, I was looking, I was looking, looking, looking. I was constantly seeing the world through a viewfinder, whether I had the camera to my eye or not. I was looking at elements, light, all of this stuff, and I and I basically learned how to view the world through a viewfinder Again. Whether it was to my eye or not, I was always looking, looking, looking, looking, and so I was pulling it apart. But when I finally put the camera down and this happened only three years ago I just I put it down, I set it down all of a sudden, the totality of things, because I was no longer looking at the elements, kind of came crashing down on me and I saw oh my God, this is how, how marvelous is this, like the, everything I can finally see it. So sort of the line. There is that I. It was only when I stopped looking that I finally started to see. But that's what that assignment was all about.

52:40 - Chase (Host) That's beautiful man. Thank you for sharing. And and kind of reminds me. I think it's Ram Dass. There's this quote that I have in kind of like my meditation psychedelic chill playlist, and it's when you quiet the mind, you open the heart.

52:55 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, yeah. When you quiet the mind, you open the eyes, you know, and photography. So often people think, oh, it's this act of presence. And I never experienced that at all. It was. It was a very mindful meaning. Mindful I was using my mind, quite a lot.

53:11 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I think most people would think that.

53:12 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, yeah, but they're like oh, you're present with the moment. For me, absolutely not. I'm lining things up, I'm calculating again. It's an act of flow, creative flow potentially, but it wasn't an act of presence. It's only when you put the, you know, when you put the viewfinder down entirely, that you see what's the totality of what you're looking at, you know.

53:36 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I kind of. Personally, I feel like I'm in an opposite situation, opposite phase right now. I'm in an opposite situation, opposite phase right now. I, up until the last like three years, I have been the bigger picture, and in many ways I still am, but but very big picture and this is opening. You know, I'm designing and building these different podcast studios and I now Corey, I shit you not, I cannot go throughout my day and not see anywhere. I go as a set, Right Right In someone's living room and a den. You know, we're just in New York this past weekend.

54:16 I'm looking in the shop, the windows, I'm looking at furniture stores, I'm looking at just rant moments, just fleeting moments and I'm like, oh, like this, like this would look really good on a camera, or like oh, I love this shape of a table next to that color of a couch. I'm kind of I don't know, going into my design era I guess, but it's just unique. I feel like I'm kind of flipped where you are.

54:36 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, but I don't. I mean, I think that's totally, I think that's beautiful and natural and I think when you're passionate about something, naturally you're going to see the world through that lens. No pun intended, you're just. That's what we do. I think all I'm not even necessarily. Well, what I would say is what I, what I experienced, and what I would advocate for is to take a moment to, to, to step one step further back when you're in that moment of like, oh, that'll be such a cool you know set, or oh, this would be a great photograph, even if you take the photograph from by the table, whatever the fuck, it happens to be just noticing what you're doing in the moment like oh wow, I'm viewing this as a set and's just like.

55:22 It's like that one step further back. You know what I mean.

55:25 - Chase (Host) So true, and it does. I do also kind of have this very top of mind moment of presence, and I'm here, I'm very mindful, I'm very still which are all other things that I'm after in my life as well and so I kind of have this extra layer to it and I'm deeply appreciative for my ability.

55:44 At first it might catch me as oh, this would be a good set, or this would look good on video or something but I just have this deep appreciation for the moment and I have these little moments all day long of this color and this shape and this person and this aroma and how beautiful. Exactly yeah, and then I can kind of extract these little essences of it to bring into my own world.

56:07 - Cory (Guest) And I think I think what happened for me is, in some ways, I just got stuck in in seeing the world that way. It's not that it was bad, it was just that that's how I was living. You know, bad, good, bad. That was that's sort of a value application, right, it's just how I was living. And then I started living another way and it felt more expansive, that's all. But I think to to your point, like seeing how a color interacts or something like that, and being mindful of it. That is presence. You're just like that's cool, you know.

56:35 - Chase (Host) I'll take it. I'll take it, Thank you, yeah, yeah. So you know kind of getting more into your journey now you know, you, you you're out on your own, you're picking up the camera, you're exploring the world, you're climbing, you know, mountain after mountain, trail after trail. I'm curious what life lesson do you feel you have taken with you to the top of the mountain that served you the most, and what is maybe a lesson you took off of the mountain that has worked best for you back in life?

56:59 - Cory (Guest) Well, I mean simple, simple, very simple lesson about getting to the top is that it does not happen all at once. It is truly I mean, the metaphor is ridiculous, but it's it's one step at a time, literally one step at a time, one day at a time. We hear all the time, but that's, that's what it is. It happens in small chunks. When you break down, climbing a mountain, um, that's all it is. It is one move at a time and it it. There's.

57:30 There's an element of planning, but that in and of itself, is is you're? You're already in the process of climbing the mountain. So, look, having a good plan is essential. Knowing what you're doing and knowing at what point you have to let go to the mystery of the experience and being comfortable with that, that's a skill. But all things happen in incremental steps. Rome was not built in a day. The mountain was not climbed in a leap. Um, we too often tell the story that, and then I was there. We tell the summit story, um, and I think it's a disservice to to to talk about the great epiphany of the summit. What I say in the book is this is sort of maybe what I brought down. Well, there's two things. Only the summit can illuminate its own insignificance. So we say it doesn't matter. But you kind of have to get there to understand that it doesn't matter.

58:28 - Chase (Host) You know what I mean. You have to. You have to but?

58:32 - Cory (Guest) but the other thing that I realized, you know, in 2016, I climbed Everest without oxygen. Climbed Everest in 2016 without oxygen. My partner turned around, I climbed, so now I'm alone climbing through the night and it's not like one of those days where you see, like the Skittle lineup, where you're just surrounded by people. I was the only one around. I think there were maybe five other clim on the summit day that day and we were climbing from the North side, so from the Tibetan side, and my partner decided to turn around and I and I just remember this moment of sitting.

59:18 I forget the feature, but it's like this very specific rock. It looks like sort of like a mushroom it might even be called mushroom rock On the summit ridge of Everest or just below where you get on the actual summit ridge, and it's just silent, like the radio goes silent and I'm sitting there alone and I just hear my breathing and my you know, I'm just listening to this thing. That is my organism surviving in a place that it has no business and and making the decision that I'm going to keep going, because I was ahead of him already at that point, and so the radio crackle dies and I just keep going and it was truly, it was fucking marvelous. It was so, so special, this quiet. You know, I was here, I'm in darkness, and and then the sun started.

01:00:17 You start to get these, the light starts to come and you start to see more shapes. Then you're I mean, there's some gruesome aspects of it where you're stepping literally over bodies and you see different body parts sticking out of these rocks and it's just, it's very, very surreal. And then the sun starts to come up and and and I got to the summit just after sunrise and I passed this really lovely I think she's Swedish or Norwegian climber on her way down with her climbing partner, who's a Sherpa guy, and then I was just alone on the summit, like literally nobody else there. It was just so rare and it wasn't perfect weather, but it was calm and I was so, so stunning in this, this realization that, like literally, my brain, my, my person, my organic figure was the highest point on the planet, and this is like it's weird, right, like it's very strange, like my mind, to say the least.

01:01:26 My mind, is the highest organic matter on the planet, and not only and the only one and the only one. There's nobody else around, there's nobody else coming up or down. I am literally alone and I realized and maybe I realized in hindsight, I mean I think subconsciously there was a recognition, and again, this is meaning making and storytelling, but it's a worthy story to tell. Think a subtle knowing that, oh fuck, there's I've. I've come to the highest place on the planet in a, in a very, very difficult way, the hardest way I can imagine, and there's no place else I can go to get away from myself. There is no, there's no, there's nothing else, Like I can just keep doing this and but and but but it will.

01:02:23 - Chase (Host) You had this thought at that moment, not reflecting on it later no, I, I really had.

01:02:27 - Cory (Guest) I mean, I think there was some subtle recognition of it at the moment, but I, but really, it came later that I was like, oh fuck, I had completely exhausted everything. There was no, there was nothing I could do that was going to get me away from the what I felt inside. And you know, like I said, I've I've told this story before, so I that's why I check in with it and I close my eyes and I try to put myself there, but it it was shocking and I think there I think my again, maybe I'm making it up, I make space for that, but I think my heart broke a little also because what else you know?

01:03:11 oh shit it, fuck I. What else do I do you know? Like, what else do I? I thought I would matter if I did this. You know, wow and it, and I don, I don't matter, because I climbed a mountain, like what it, and it's sort of like. What a silly thought to begin with.

01:03:30 - Chase (Host) No man like hand to God, like I've not climbed Everest, but in any situation where I could even in the smallest way relate to like I am at the peak of this experience, right of expansion of what I'm capable of, of body, mind, soul, it is has always been met pretty immediately with I am so insignificant, I am so meaningless, like how silly of me to think that I could keep going and keep running and keep expanding and getting to this next level. It's like the higher up you go, you realize like I'm fine down here. Yeah, all the work is actually down here, yeah.

01:04:11 - Cory (Guest) It's kind of like you know and we've talked a little bit about like the psychedelic space, but that's what.

01:04:16 - Chase (Host) I'm talking about Well that's it.

01:04:18 - Cory (Guest) You know, there's the old adage of you know, once you get the message, hang up the phone. I like to say you don't have to go to space to see the stars. You know like you can. And in fact I've never experienced something so psychedelic as just walking around in daily life. That has been as expansive and as mind bending, as waking up to the reality of what I'm already experiencing. And I think so often we get lost in sort of people and I'm talking, you know I do a lot of, I have done a lot of psychedelic work, primarily in a therapeutic sense, but like it's so fun and it's so like expansive that you think that's where all the work is, but that the work is not there.

01:05:05 - Chase (Host) The work is at the work is the integration.

01:05:08 - Cory (Guest) The work is the integration and the work is in living, and like you can keep going back there but and that's fine, that's fine, go back, have it, have it, have an experience.

01:05:17 - Chase (Host) But for me I've just started to see like the real experience is just like boom, it's just here, you know speaking of as someone who has spent the last three ish years now in semi-regular and this year, because of the state of my mental health and things have been coming up, I am back in very regular, not only therapy, but, uh, ketamine this is a psychotherapy and just at home ketamine therapy and, um. So I could go on and on forever about it and talk about the profound benefits that has had on my mental health and just awakening to a lot of different things. But what was it about psychedelic therapy that attracted you, as this could be a potential solution or is, in my mind, a valuable part of the work that I want to commit to on myself?

01:06:06 - Cory (Guest) Well, I think I think you you mentioned an interesting word there that um. I don't think there's a solution and I know you weren't saying it that way, but I think a lot of people think of psychedelics as this panacea, and I think it can be very, very helpful. It certainly has been for me. I also see a lot of people or observe it, maybe this is my own judgment make space for that too, um, but people sort of they do it and then they create a new story about whatever they you know, whatever they experienced in that space, and then they hold onto that Um, which is, again, that's, that's what the human mind does. We, we make meaning out of things, we tell stories about things. Um, we can't help it.

01:06:48 - Chase (Host) We can't help it.

01:06:48 - Cory (Guest) That's consciousness right, like, we interpret data and apply a narrative to it, which creates meaning, and then that generates beliefs, right so, and then we live and die by those beliefs. What? What attracted me to it was I was out of options, something wasn't shifting. What I found in it was not what I thought Ketamine for me, again, that is my psychedelic drug of choice, and I'm fine calling it that, like. You know, that's what has been the most generative for me, both as an interventional mood stabilizer, but also as a way to access altered levels of consciousness that aren't overwhelming. Does that make sense? I I totally understand.

01:07:48 - Chase (Host) I also want to ask what about creativity? Yeah, um, I know how should I say this. I think an overlooked part, an overlooked part of life and an overlooked part of mental health, commitment to your mental health. That I personally experienced was the value of creativity. And I mean we can look at there's so much science that shows how ketamine it just the neuroplasticity that we get, is profound. You're getting parts of your brain to talk for the first time ever, for the first time in a long time. In a long time you're getting this thing called neural crosstalk. We literally get our left and right hemispheres to begin to make connections, new connections. And then the level of creativity that I get anytime I come out of a ketamine therapy session. I can't write notes fast enough.

01:08:40 - Cory (Guest) I can't get ideas down fast enough.

01:08:42 - Chase (Host) I can't, you know, go watch a fantasy movie fast enough. It's just level of creativity that enhances so many other areas of my life. But I will also say has been profound and instrumental in my mental health healing and it's kind of hard to really articulate, I think, because it's so personal. The role of creativity in mental health, can you relate at all? Oh yeah, no, I think because it's so personal. The role of creativity in mental health, can you relate at all?

01:09:05 - Cory (Guest) Oh yeah, no, I totally understand what you're talking about. I um, I mean the other. The other thing that I wanted to say about about what it really has done for me, is that it's connected me to, um, my heart, and I don't want people to roll their eyes and get, oh my God. The heart is not a metaphor. The heart actually has a profound role in emotion processing. We have mirror neurons in our heart and our minds. They are talking along the vagus nerve. Emotion processing starts in the heart.

01:09:40 - Chase (Host) From what I understand, the heart sends more neurochemical messages to the brain than it receives from the brain.

01:09:47 - Cory (Guest) Right, exactly, so it's. So we're actually beginning a lot of our neural processing and our and our emotion processing in our heart, which is fascinating. So it connected me to that like in a very real sense. And until people feel that and I'm not saying you have to do it through psychedelics, it's it's really hard to relate to, to what I'm saying. So it put me back in touch with my heart To that point. My sense is that art is, is a mostly heart generated creation. So creativity, I think, predominantly comes from the heart, as an the heart and is interpreted through the mind. Now, maybe that's a little too philosophical for people because certainly art feels very much like it is a mind act, but it sort of transcends the mind. Certainly it comes through there.

01:10:37 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it's just like a conduit. I think you've asked any artist or any true creative. I'm just a conduit for what's happening.

01:10:46 - Cory (Guest) But it gets sort of structured in the mind, right.

01:10:50 - Chase (Host) Right, yeah.

01:10:51 - Cory (Guest) So for me, in the psychedelic experience, whatever it happens to be, by putting me more in touch with my heart, I'm actually more in touch with my creative center Right, and so whether or not it generates more creativity in me, I can't really say, because I'm not like you, where I come out I don't generally journal. I kind of just try to like just reintegrate into the world and and I'm sort of just noticing more um, what I you know. So it's not to say that writing notes is in any way bad or good, it's just that's I'm like. I'm just kind of like maybe I should write more notes.

01:11:33 - Chase (Host) You know, the first place I did ketamine assisted psychotherapy was in this clinic, actually not far from here, and part of the process afterwards was access to journaling painting like a. Zen garden. Um, and it was just. It was really wild, me and other patients, the creative outlets that we would gravitate towards. I mean, I used to paint in like middle school, high school. I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a painter, I'm definitely not a Zen garden extraordinaire, but you know, picking up a colored pencil or raking the Zen garden or just sitting in that environment where those things existed, gave me this level of connection and appreciation of of a creative side that I didn't fully know the depths of.

01:12:16 - Cory (Guest) Well, I remember I came out of one and I just started drawing triangles, like, and just seeing how triangles fit together.

01:12:22 - Chase (Host) it was really a strange, you know so you come out of the session and you're just like I gotta draw a triangle yeah, basically because I'd I'd seen a lot of sort of geometrics.

01:12:31 - Cory (Guest) Oh yeah, in the experience and I was just curious about how they fit together and I was curious about symbology and different. You know different things that we've seen throughout the ages, that in you know know Pythagoras and Euclid, and I'm just like Jesus anyway.

01:12:46 And that sounds a little heady for people, but I mean to the mental health conversation they have a. You know, they have a really profound way of accessing deep parts of us that I think, once touched, can open up to healing. I think the danger of them not danger, but the but one of the pitfalls is we get trapped in the story that we create in the psychedelic space or we think that by understanding it we somehow healed it. And the way I sort of phrase it in the book is like you can have a dream that you made fire. You're like the original caveman and you're rubbing the sticks together. You made fire right. And then you come out into real life and you think that you know how to make fire and I'm like, yeah, we'll go rub some sticks together because now you have the information, but it still takes practice, and that's what people refer to as integration Right.

01:13:33 - Chase (Host) No, it kind of on the cusp of mental health. Here I'll say you and I got connected through the mental health world.

01:13:40 - Cory (Guest) Yeah.

01:13:41 - Chase (Host) And so I just want to say we were in therapy together.

01:13:44 - Cory (Guest) No, I'm just kidding.

01:13:46 - Chase (Host) Maybe not yet I don't know, yeah, but uh no, we met through the mental health space here in LA and I just think, I think it's so cool and I just want to, you know, tip of the hat to you, for I'm so grateful for this connection we have now for the work that you and I both have committed to to our mental health and talking about it, writing about it, making a podcast about it.

01:14:07 Yeah, you know, we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for your commitment, our commitment to that aspect of our lives. And now here we are, getting to expand on it and hopefully connect with someone watching or listening. Connect with someone watching or listening, and I mean that is the through line, in my opinion, of the color of everything and kind of how you were able to come back to center so much, when you are, quite literally, the furthest extremes in the world, of center all over, living this grand, amazing life. You're coming back to center now, you're writing about it, you're sharing your experience, and so I just want to acknowledge that work in you. But another aspect is you kind of hinted, where you said it earlier, about this diagnosis of type 2, bipolar. Yeah, um, how are you navigating that? What is that and how does that? What does that look like in your life now?

01:15:01 - Cory (Guest) So bipolar two is distinct from bipolar one. Bipolar two is characterized by it's so funny, I talk about it so much and sometimes I get confused and I'm like Jesus, am I saying it right? And bipolar two is characterized by spells of hypomania, which is sort of not as amplified uh, amplified as full blown mania which can can tip into like a psychotic break. In fact, in some ways it could be even considered psychosis um, where you know your decision-making is so radically impaired by the activity in your mind that you are in some ways offline. This is, this is like full mania is getting engaged after three days of knowing somebody and, and you know, buying a house or selling a house after not, you know, Extremely impulsive decision making.

01:15:56 Incredibly impulsive, very dangerous decision making, um high risk taking your, your sort of your speeding through life and sort of you're speeding through life and you know you're talking fast. People are like what you know kind of.

01:16:08 It's very, very jarring and chaotic energy very chaotic, unstructured, um, it can be violent, it can be, um, completely erratic. I mean it usually is hypomania, which sits below that which is what bipolar two generally experiences is, um is very high, functioning actually like hypomania is a beautiful place because you, you know you're, you can learn languages. You can start businesses you can like hypomania is actually very enviable, but it's not sustainable. Start businesses you can be like. Hypomania is actually very enviable, but it's not sustainable. You know what I mean. So it's um, but it's again. It's characterized by really quick thinking, racing thoughts, um, again it's.

01:16:52 There's a high level of impulsivity, grandiosity, sort of believing you can do anything and but, but without taking that final leap into mania, but still like that belief that you can do and be anything is intoxicating and you're certain of it. And then the flip side of that is like nearly suicidal or suicidal depression where you're so crushed your serotonin, all your good healthy sort of happy hormones and neurotransmitters are radically depleted, you've run them into the ground and now you're so depressed that you, you just can't function Right and you can have rapid cyclers who are just up and down and up and down. You can have long cycles which can be months at a time Um me, I see that in very sort of longer cycles in my history. Right now I would say that because I'm more aware of it and can see it and feel it a little bit more acutely, I would say I don't go to the same extremes anymore because I'm very, very aware, especially when I'm getting, when I'm cycling up, which means I'm going towards sort of hypomania and the sense of like.

01:18:09 - Chase (Host) You're aware of it. Therefore, you can control it more or you're just navigate it, okay control.

01:18:15 - Cory (Guest) It's like I I still take medication. I take limotrigine, um, and it and it very effective, uh, pharmaceutical that can help with the upright, you know, the upcycling, um, and the way I notice it is. Is my thoughts really really speed up to the point where it's kind of like edgy and uncomfortable, where you know it can. It can really be anxiety inducing, that the, the speed which with which I'm thinking you know you're just like Jesus gets kind of cracky in a way, and also a diminished need for sleep, lack of, you know, lack of appetite, things like that. So I'm very aware of what that looks like.

01:18:54 Depression for me is a much harder one to catch, because it seems like a it's a slower decline and then all of a sudden, two months later, I'm I'm like, oh shit, that's what's going on, like my inability to activate my inability to, or the trouble I feel activating my procrastination, my um it's and and what's interesting for me is the bipolar two often presents this sort of. You know, my most severe moments with it have been, as in mixed episodes, um, where you're actually experiencing both presentations at the same time, it's very, very jarring.

01:19:29 - Chase (Host) So you're experiencing those two, but then are you also kind of like um, I'm not trying to offend you Are you also in your own mind Like, are you for sure? You're totally in your mind, so you're present on what's going on, but also of these other I don't not personalities, but like circumstances and things well, yeah, I mean, that can you, essentially that can you can get blinded to that.

01:19:49 - Cory (Guest) I've, I've definitely been blinded to that and certainly you know, leaving climbing and photography was precipitated by a bipolar, two mixed episode, which I didn't see it for what it was in the moment. It took a couple of weeks before I was like oh shit. And and that you know, it's so funny because I always had the language I knew this journey for for since I was 14 years old. But it wasn't until I was like 40 that I really started to see it in its wholeness and see how much it had impacted my life, and see looking back and going, oh shit, I think I was in a deep cycle there. Even though I was taking medications for it, it was never really monitored. I'd always been in therapy, but it was never.

01:20:34 It can be very subtle and it can be very insidious in ways that you just. But again, I think that the whole thing about mental health right now for me is for a long time I'm like, well, what is the stigma? We always talk about breaking the stigma or or, and I and what I started to identify was like the stigma of it is something is fundamentally flawed, like something's wrong with you. You are broken, and so this whole journey is, is in and again I acknowledge this as a bit of a catchphrase, but it's like it's about breaking the story of broken, and it is a story. Neurodivergence, um. Mental health challenges can, can very much be our greatest strengths If we learn how to navigate them and harness the power that they actually have. I don't like the term mental illness. I think it implies something that is, I think, can be harmful. I understand illness, but even with things like cancer, you can step back and say my body is functioning in this way and, as a result, these things are happening versus I'm sick.

01:21:43 There's very. You know, the words we use are very, very, very powerful.

01:21:48 - Chase (Host) There's one way to describe your circumstances and there's another, and one way gives away your power immediately, right, and another reminds you of how much power you have left.

01:21:56 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, and another. And the third way is just a statement of fact Right. Way is just a statement of fact, right. And I would argue that the statement of fact is deeply powerful in that it offers, you know, a future that is not concrete. I am sick. I love that. You know what I mean. It's fixed. I love that. You know. The statement of fact is, it's just. These are the things that are happening.

01:22:22 - Chase (Host) They can change facts do not mean they're not immutable.

01:22:29 - Cory (Guest) Yeah no, yeah, unless we're talking about like is the earth round? Yeah, okay, the earth is fucking round, right since when?

01:22:35 - Chase (Host) yeah, if anybody knows how round it is, it's got to be you yeah, you've seen it from so many different angles and heights and depths.

01:22:41 Man yeah, um, you're kind of getting towards the end here. There's another quote that you have in your book from or from a man who wrote another book that I think is just one of the most profound but also one of the most technical books on understanding, understanding mental health and trauma, and you know even human physiology, uh, bessel A Van Der Kolk. He wrote this book called the Body Keeps the Score, and you have this quote in here that I want to round us out with that says as long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.

01:23:27 - Cory (Guest) Every time I hear that one, I'm like, oh dude, he nails it, he nails it.

01:23:33 - Chase (Host) And I think that's such a perfect way to kind of put a bow on our conversation here, man, about gathering information from all angles, from all heights, from all depths, something that you have been such an incredible example of in your career, in your life, regardless of the reasons behind it.

01:23:50 I mean you did it.

01:23:50 Your circumstances were your circumstances and you made them your own.

01:23:53 You made a career out of it and now you're kind of coming off that mountain and realizing there is another mountain and you're doing it from a very heart-centered place now, and for me I resonate a lot with, because I connect with that kind of same positioning in life and same heart-centered intent, and also my therapist would laugh because that's exactly where she's trying to get me in navigating a lot of these circumstances.

01:24:26 Uh and so again just want to credit you in your work and your career and the example you're setting for letting other men, women, people, everyone know that you know there is always another mountain, but it's not like this shouldn't be scary. And if you can figure out the path to the top of the next mountain, but it's not like it shouldn't be scary. And if you can figure out the path to the top of the next mountain or just stay where you are, from that heart centered place, I think you are to his point. You know no longer keeping secrets to yourself and you're using the information of your circumstances to realize how much courage you can have in spite of.

01:25:01 - Cory (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't I. There's not much I can add to that, I think it's um. All I would say is that to know what you know does not need to be a judgment, and I think that's what's so scary about it is. So often, when we dive into this world of of trying to understand ourselves, we're worried that if we speak the truth about ourselves, that that somehow makes us flawed or bad. Even if those secrets feel like monsters, they're not. They're just things and they can all be navigated. Yeah, man.

01:25:40 - Chase (Host) Yeah so. Well, all of your work, your photography, social media, the book the color of everything is out now, and the part two, the kind of addition two, uh, is also going to be out now. Yeah, give us a little intro to that yeah so.

01:25:55 - Cory (Guest) So the color of everything is the memoir. It's an internal mining of this. I think a lot of people, even my friends, have been like I don't want to, you know, float my own boat here, but they're like I liked this book so much more than I thought I was going to. And they say it with like a lot of love.

01:26:12 - Chase (Host) You're way smarter than I thought.

01:26:13 - Cory (Guest) Well it's more that they thought it was going to be this very like sort of you know, woe is me? Look at my story, blah, blah, blah and it's, or it's just going to be about climbing and bullshit. And it's not that and it's. You know Alex Honnold, who I gave a you know free solo. I gave him an early copy and he was going to give me a blurb. Well, he did give me a blurb and he said Eat, pray. Love Meets Into Thin Air, written by Hunter S Thompson.

01:26:45 - Chase (Host) So um which I'll take all of them. They're all great books.

01:26:46 - Cory (Guest) You know, it's the back country of uh so, um, but this is like the internal exploration. And then the compliment to that is the photo book that's coming out. Well, it's out October 15th, so or was out October 15th, I don't know when it's going to be out now.

01:26:59 Yeah, it'll be out now, okay. So, and it's called bipolar, and that is obviously a play on the diagnosis that I carry, which I don't really necessarily identify with. But it was useful because I realized I I photographed from the Arctic to Antarctica and so throughout my career I had literally photographed, you know, sort of bipolar Um and and that is a compliment to this because it they're really an ecosystem it works sort of as um. You know, this is the internal exploration and the other is the external exploration. That that was facilitated by and they they sort of bounce off each other. So if you're reading this and you've got the other book, you can actually flip through and find a photograph that I'm talking about and um and this one has some great photos in it as well.

01:27:46 Yeah, it's got a little insert in there and some some cool childhood stuff, but it, yeah, they really do work together. They work best together and, um, yeah, I mean it's, they were, it's a labor of love, but I, you know, I encourage, I hope people will read, I hope people will read this this one's my baby. You know, I've lived with the photographs for so long. Um, that, to me, I think, yeah, it's great to hold them and look at them and experience them, but to me, the color of everything is my baby and and and bipolar is its baby. Does that make sense? You know what I mean? The whole family tree, it's the family tree, the whole family tree man.

01:28:27 - Chase (Host) Well, Corey, again man, it's just been great to get to know you the last couple of months. Congrats on the books, yeah, and keep climbing, man.

01:28:35 - Cory (Guest) Thanks, keep climbing. Thanks, it's great Ever forward.

01:28:39 - Chase (Host) For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to everforwardradio.com